Blood Temperature
by Lady of the Phoenix
Summary: The first time they meet in person, Gamzee can see a bit through Karkat's secret. Or feel through a bit of it at least. And the understand he gets on is one of the most painful that he's ever had. Sequel to A Near Thing


He knows Karkat's a lowblood the second he pulls his best friend into a hug. And he mourns the knowing. It's a kind of knowing he can't deny, but he doesn't want to accept. It's a knowing that shouldn't be known. But he can feel it through the amazing softness of his best friend's shirt, feel the tale telling heat.

And it's enough to burn a hole in a brother's blood pusher.

Gamzee had never really cared much for the hemospectrum before this, never gave it much of a turning over in his thinkpan, not even when he was trippin on the wicked elixir or staring into the colors of his sylladex. Sure, Equibro always got all over him about acting like a real highblood, and lectured him in that not-lecture way about how important it was to understand the order of things. But Gamzee had always wondered why he should care. It was like magnets really, he didn't know how it worked. Except the difference was that, unlike magnets, he didn't much care. The important thing was the miracle of just how different they could all be, a motherfucking rainbow of life. Sure, he knew there were differences, he got that school feeding. Apparently the highbloods who weren't him got all up in a motherfucker's face if they were lower and not acting it, and they were stronger, but the lowbloods (and why did it have to be 'low' and 'high'? Why couldn't it be bright and dark? Or day and night, or some other set of terms?) had all those miraculous powers. They could move stuff with their minds, they could shoot beams of energy with their eyes, they could get their chill on with the animals like Tavbro. Do all sorts of things, and way cooler things than what the few highblood powers gave a brother. They didn't fuck with other people's minds, or make them so motherfucking afraid that they couldn't see which way was up and which was down. There were no miracles in those things, not like there was in the psychic goings ons of the lower bloods.

But he'd noticed it when this whole Sgrub thing had started. When he'd started having his friends all trippin merrily through the motherfucking colors and wonders of the Land of Tents and Mirth. Every time one of the motherfuckers ran into him, Gamzee gave them a wicked hug (except Eridan, that motherfucker was not the kind of motherfucking friend he could have been). And so he'd started to get his understand on. Started to have an understand like he was sure no one else did, because they didn't just step back and let the understand happen.

The lower the blood, the warmer they felt in his arms.

Feferi was chill like Faygo way too long in the chill box and almost made Gamzee shiver. Equibro (once a motherfucker got around all the salty dampness that was kinda like walking on the beach) had been a bit warmer in comparison, but not much more than Gamzee was himself. When Gamzee had hugged Nepeta (and that wicked sister had motherfucking gotten her hug on, much to Equius's unhappiness), she had been warm like the sand outside his hive a few hours after sundown. Hugging Tavbro had been like wrapping his arms around a fresh baked sopor pie, right out of the cooking box, and Gamzee had been reluctant to let such a wonderful warmth go.

Karkat...

Karkat had been like that time where Gamzee had fallen asleep on the beach waiting for his lusus to come back, and didn't even wake up to notice until the sun had not only risen, but started to burn him under even his facepaint. For near a perigree his own skin had been burning hot to the touch, a memory of that mistake that had burned his skin and tinted all but his face a light shade of purple.

Karkat was getting his embrace on with the motherfucking sun. Karkat burned so hot it almost hurt, and Gamzee had held him all the tighter for it (with his motherfucking best friend ranting and flailing and getting his anger on like no one's business the whole time), reveling in the fucking miracle that was the heat of his best friend's body. Hot like a fucking dream, and all that through the shirt and non-too thin skin a troll was prone to. And it was all a motherfucker could do to not lean in and press his lips against Karkat's, to feel as near as he could to the true intensity of a motherfucker's blood through the thin, tender skin of a motherfuckers lips. That sort of behavior was exactly what a motherfucking best friend like Karkat wouldn't take so well, so instead he finally released the angry little man and started to raise a hand to brush against them instead.

Only Karkat wasn't in the mood to be having of any of that, and the second Gamzee removed an arm from around the motherfucker's waist, Karkat was pulling away, screaming his motherfucking horns off about 'FUCKING INSANE CLOWNS DON'T GET THE CONCEPT OF PERSONAL FUCKING SPACE.' For a moment all Gamzee can do is wonder just how he could make a motherfucker like this blush so he can touch the blood colored cheeks and feel the burning under his fingers, to press them there until he was forced to draw them away and deal with the fucking burns on the pads of his fingers. Another part of him, one only barely heard through the fuzzy, warm haze of the sopor, demands that he cut the motherfucker, and gather up that scalding blood on his fingers, and paint his own flesh with the miraculous motherfucking fire he would find.

Except that precious miracle of Karkat's burning blood is a secret. Gamzee knows that, has always known that. There's something about that makes Karkat use gray, not whatever miraculous color heat like that takes on, hiding behind the chillest of colors which doesn't suit him body or mind.

Then it hits him, the understand to make all other understands no longer seem like miracles: this is what truly separates the lowbloods from the high. It isn't that lower is less. No, the motherfucking hemospectrum has got it backwards. Low is high, and high is motherfucking low. What, Gamzee had to wonder, did he have that Karkat did not? Surely with such heat in his veins, in his blood pusher, Karkat lived in a way that a motherfucker couldn't understand. He could be black with more fury, red with a greater passion. How could he not with all that heat to fuel his hate and his pity? This was a motherfucker who could be conciliatory with all the force of his blood, whether it be pale or ashen. All of his life was lived with this intensity, and the fire in him was the reason that Karkat never seemed to be able to get his chill on. Karkat didn't even motherfucking understand what chill was, Gamzee realized.

This was the reason that a red or yellow or brown motherfucker could tap into psychic powers: because they just had the heat in them to connect with those more forceful aspects of their minds. This was the reason Karkat only shouted, because how could a motherfucker be soft with all that burning in their thinkpan? This was why the 'lowbloods' lived such short lives. Their motherfucking bodies couldn't handle the miracles of their blood.

That was the understanding that hurt the most. Hurt worse than the sweet burning that was Karkat's flesh. These motherfuckers lived in a way that cooler bloods could never understand. They lived every motherfucking moment of their lives, and Gamzee had wasted so many precious moments in comparison. And eventually there would come a time when the burning was too much, where it left a hot blooded motherfucker burnt out, until they were nothing more than a shell that couldn't carry on no matter how much they wanted to. Then the world was robbed of the greatest miracles of their people. Left only with colder bloods and those warm bloods that hadn't burnt themselves out yet.

And Karkat, motherfucking Karkat, his best friend, would be gone sooner than anyone else. Who knew how long someone burning that hot could last. Another ten sweeps? Five? And that would be assuming they survived the miracle of Sgrub.

"GAMZEE, WHAT THE ACTUAL HELL ARE YOU FUCKING STARING AT ME LIKE THAT FOR?"

He wants to tell Karkat to chill, to tone down the heat of his life so they can have more time, so that he doesn't have to outlive a motherfucker, but what does it matter? That burning, it's something that can't be cooled, can't sit back and relax. It's a burning that can only be quenched when it's consumed everything in its path. Against all reason he wishes that it could consume him too, to give Karkat more time to burn, brilliant and hot as the Alternian sun, so that he won't have to go without the miracle that was his best friend. But how does a motherfucker get their explain on about something like that? Karkat would just brush it off, brush him off, and go and burn somewhere else, somewhere that Gamzee couldn't see him, couldn't be there when the fire finally reached the end.

"No mOtHeRfUcKiNg rEaSoN, bEsT fRiEnD."

It's all Gamzee can say, because how does a motherfucker help another get this kind of understand on?

"WHAT THE FUCK? ARE THOSE FUCKING TEARS IN YOUR FUCKING EYES?"

Gamzee draws an arm across his face, smearing paint on his face and arm, and he smiles at the trail of diluted purple mixed into the white and gray.

"WeLl wHaT Do yOu kNoW. tHeY ArE. fUcKiNg mIrAcLeS. mUsT Be hApPy tO SeE A MoThErFuCkInG BrO."

"IF THIS IS HOW YOU FUCKING SHOW YOU'RE FUCKING HAPPY, COUNT ME THE FUCK OUT OF IT."

"YoU GoT iT BrO."

Because this is the kind of understand that makes a brother mourn. Gamzee turns away, honk, and let Karkat go off on whatever tangent a brother needs to next, and he knows there's going to be a tangent. How can a motherfucker who burns so bright not rant? As for Gamzee, he just looks towards the miracles of his sylladex, waiting for a mirror and his facepaints to go by, keeping his motherfucking sound receptors open the whole time to Karkat. No mOtHeRfUcKiNg wAy he's going to miss even a second of the fiery motherfucker. Because who but the Mirthful Messiahs knew just how many seconds they'd have. 


End file.
